Gabriella Tóth

Some Remarks on the Functional Domain of Small Clauses

This paper discusses the interpretation of case and agreement on secondary predicates of complement and resultative small clauses. In Hungarian and in Finnish Complement Small Clause predicates bear dative and essive case, respectively, while resultative Small clause  (SC) predicates bear translative case. The temporal ordering of the SC and the main predicate (complement SC) is either contemporaneous or the state encoded in the SC temporally follows the event expressed in the main predicate (resultative SC). It is argued that the functional projection of the SC is AspP whose head is responsible for the temporal ordering of the two (sub-)events represented by the main predicate and the SC. The case on the SCP in these languages reflects this temporal ordering. The dative in Hungarian and the essive in Finnish express that the event of the main predicate and the state of the SC is contemporaneous while the translative in both languages renders the event of the main predicate anterior to the state expressed by SC.